#I also firmly believe that even if erik would never think of/suggest anything wild himself he would try most things that Charles suggested

[martianbugsbunny]

Erik is totally 99.9% vanilla in bed; he's maybe a little rough, a little fumbling, but he's generally like your fifty-year-old parents on a Wednesday night. It's Charles who's a total freak between the sheets, you can't look at that guy chugging out of a test tube and basically using his own damn thesis as a pickup line and tell me he's not into some weird stuff

[fuzzballsheltiepants]

(Mis)Adventures of a Very Gay Explorer

My reward for the wonderful person who submitted a prompt for @aftgvotes.  Their prompt was:  anything with andriel post cannon and I mean like within the next couple weeks or like nicky and/or Matt's view on andriel post cannon.  I hope they -- and you -- enjoy this little bit of silly fluff!  Read on AO3 if you prefer.

Looking back, Nicky wondered how he had missed it.

Not just the fact that Andrew and Neil were together; all of it.  Jesus, he hadn’t even realized his own cousin was gay, which, talk about a complete and utter gaydar failure.  He definitely needed an upgrade on that, as he had told Erik, tangled in his arms during their precious few weeks together.  Erik had laughed and kissed his temple, and asked if it was available on the app store.  And damn, if that wasn’t an idea worth marketing…

But now that he was with them again, he could see it.  The little excuses Andrew made to touch Neil, that he had always made, even back when Neil was new and dark-eyed and dark-haired.  The way Neil always seemed aware of Andrew’s movements, even if he wasn’t obviously watching him.  They orbited around each other like twin stars, each with their own gravity, neither overwhelming the other.  

It was beautiful, even if Nicky didn’t totally understand.

He had never understood love without softness.  Quiet love, he got, no matter what everyone else thought.  His mother’s love had been quiet, though it had also been as fragile as spun sugar.  And with Erik, the moments of deepest connection were ones of murmurs, or no words at all.  That was how he had known, in the end, that it was real.  

But Neil and Andrew weren’t just quiet.  They would mock each other on the court and off it; they were hard pushes and heavy looks.  That sharp edge in Neil’s eyes never smoothed, the rigidity in Andrew’s shoulders never slackened.  The flickers of emotion that would race across Andrew’s face when Neil did something particularly amusing were notable for their intensity but impossible to decipher.

Nicky had a theory, though.  Well, more of a hypothesis.  He firmly believed that they were capable of softness; he needed to believe this, or he would be forever worried that they weren’t healthy for each other.  He just needed some evidence, evidence he was willing to risk life and limb to try to get.

He needed to catch them in their habitat, unawares.

Matt tried to dissuade him with the true-but-irrelevant logic that if they wanted anybody to know what they were up to, they’d be more public about it.  Aaron just shook his head and muttered, “Your funeral,” before turning back to his biology textbook.  Which, it was fucking summer but whatever.

Nicky felt like a researcher, looking to discover the secret mating rituals of the Wild Gays.  (He himself being most definitely a domesticated Gay, and more than contented to be such.)  He started small, watching them more closely when they walked their laps and noting when they were slow to finish up in the locker room.  Sadly, his opportunities to observe were largely restricted by the presence of the Newest Influx of Assholes, a.k.a. The Freshmen.  Neil was on-edge whenever they were around, and for that matter so was Nicky.  

So he changed tactics.  Now that he didn’t room with them his chances to observe them in the dorm were few and far between.  Kevin was a useful, if unwitting, accomplice some days, allowing Nicky to follow him in with only token protest.  Of course, this carried the painful price of Nicky having to watch exy games in their off-season, but whatever.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really help his cause.  Neil and Andrew were frequently absent, and if they were there they were generally silent and were rarely even near each other.  Neil would watch the games with Kevin, and Nicky would be left to observe Andrew impassively smoke or read.  A couple of times Andrew looked up and caught him staring, and Nicky swore to himself he would stop before he got stabbed.

One night Andrew declared, sparking his lighter, that the watching of a single more exy game would result in the suite being set on fire.  Kevin grumbled but didn’t push his luck, and they settled in to watch a movie instead.  Nicky waited for Andrew and Neil to get cozy under the cover of darkness, but though they sat next to each other there were no wandering hands or secret kisses.

It was time for a different approach.  Neil and Andrew had to be going somewhere when they both disappeared after practice, after all.  He checked the parking lot; the Maserati was still sitting there in its shiny glory, which meant they had to be somewhere in or around Fox Tower.  He tiptoed down to the basement; no sign of them.  The stairwells and halls were likewise empty.  It seemed unlikely that they would have walked to the library, and most of the other buildings were closed for the summer.  Which left…

He jogged up the stairs, thinking Wymack would be proud of him when he reached the top and wasn’t even out of breath.  Yes; the door was closed but the lock was obviously compromised.  He almost pushed through, but the Voice of Wisdom that lurked deep within his brain and sounded like Renee suggested he not push his luck that far.  He headed back down to the third floor.

Dan was in her room, with the door open and Allison and Matt lounging across the couches.  “Do I remember that you have binoculars?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dan said cautiously.

“Can I borrow them?”

She opened her mouth as if to ask why, then shook her head.  “I don’t want to know,” she said as she handed them over.  “Just don’t get murdered.”

“Dude,” Matt said, “what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Nicky grinned, taking the binoculars and heading back down the stairs.

There was a little collection of trees conveniently located near one of the footpaths behind the Tower.  Nicky strolled along the path as nonchalantly as he could manage, unsure if someone—two suspicious someones, in fact—was watching him.  When he got to the copse, he slipped into it and found a nice hiding spot from which to train the binoculars on the roof.

They were up there.  He felt the jolt of adrenaline that must be familiar to safari goers and researchers.  Eureka!  He did a tiny dance of celebration then refocused through the binoculars.  

The assholes were just...sitting there.  Close, but not touching.  Both with cigarettes in hand, though only Andrew seemed to be actually smoking.  He couldn’t tell if they were even talking.  After about fifteen minutes, he was hot and sticky and needed a lemonade, so he headed down to the little campus cafe with the super-cute barista.  Andrew and Neil were nowhere to be found when he made his way back a while later.

He checked back the next day, and the next.  It was always the same. Sometimes Andrew stole Neil’s cigarette, and he always lit one for each of them, which was sweet, Nicky supposed, in a cancer-inducing way.  But that could have just been efficiency.  

After three weeks, the only thing Nicky had learned were some of the tendencies of strikers they’d be facing in the fall.  Which seriously seemed like a waste of valuable mental resources when there were still weeks to go before the season started.  He could definitively state that Andrew and Neil seemed content, at the least, with how things were between them, but he had already known that.  

Content wasn’t enough.  Late at night he would lie in bed and think about it.  About what he knew now about the horrors of Andrew’s childhood, and Neil’s too.  And he wondered if maybe...maybe they thought this was all they deserved.  All they were capable of.  Attraction and strong emotion, never tempered by any actual affection.  

“Leave it alone,” Aaron snapped at him, when Nicky brought it up again.  

“But—”

“No.  Just stop.”  He punctuated his words by leaving the room, letting the door slam shut behind him.  Nicky stared after him; he didn’t think he would ever understand his cousins.  How someone could care so painfully much and yet be so averse to any demonstration.

Which...maybe that was true with Andrew and Neil, too.  Maybe it wasn’t up to him to decide if their relationship worked.  Or how, since at least for now it clearly did.  Maybe this was just a step they both needed to take, to learn how to be physical with someone just as broken as they were and then they would move on.  And maybe that was okay.

A few days after he had given up on his research project, he got back to Fox Tower and realized he had forgotten his phone at the stadium.  Matt offered to drive him back to get it, but for once it wasn’t too humid to breathe and he decided to enjoy the brief reprieve of fresh air.  Erik would be proud of him, he decided.  Besides, the walk took him past the cafe and that barista was probably working…

The lights in the stadium were on, which was weird.  Wymack’s office was empty; he must have forgot to shut them off on his way out.  Dropping his empty cup in the trash, he slipped in through the cracked door of the lounge; his phone was probably at his locker, but he might have left it at his chair.  

The faintest murmur hit his ear and he froze.  In the dim light, he caught a flash of blond hair.  For a second he thought he had caught Aaron and Katelyn, but she was gone for the summer.  The quiet laugh that followed was decidedly too deep to belong to a woman.  Holding his breath, he rose up on his toes to try to see over the back of the couch.

Andrew was sitting with Neil’s head in his lap, carding his fingers through his hair.  Neil’s eyes were closed, and he was smiling with a gentleness Nicky had never seen on his face.  Nicky couldn’t see Andrew’s face, but there was something different about his posture.  He wasn’t soft, exactly; just...peaceful.  A sharp edge smoothed in a way Nicky had never thought was possible.

His phone could wait.  This was a moment too private even for an intrepid researcher to intrude upon.  But his hypothesis now had evidence to support it, and he would sleep the sleep of the righteous that night.

By some miracle he managed to escape without either of them noticing.  He made his way back to Fox Tower with that image firmly in his mind, and he was pretty sure he was grinning like a fool by the time he closed his dorm room door behind him.

Aaron was there, staring at his phone with a lovesick expression of his own.  He glanced up at Nicky, then looked at him again.  “What’s with you?”

“Nothing,” Nicky said, and laughed.  “It’s just...it’s all good.”

Aaron stared at him for a minute.  “I told you you didn’t need to worry about them.”

Nicky rolled his eyes as he flopped onto the couch next to him.  “You told me to leave it alone.”

“Whatever.  Neil might be an asshole, but Andrew’s Andrew.”

Aaron didn’t elaborate, but Nicky thought he knew what he meant.  He picked through the contents of the fridge looking for something to eat and thought again about what he knew.  Andrew and Neil might never have known kindness, true; they had never known anything that Nicky would define as love.  But maybe that didn’t matter.  Maybe love, maybe it didn’t get passed down through generations, like some heirloom bowl or blue eyes.  Maybe it was something that could be discovered, deep in the inner recesses of a soul, even after it had been buried under a lifetime of anger and fear and hatred, if only you had a reason to go looking for it.

And maybe that was the most beautiful thing Nicky could imagine.